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Winner of the 1994 Booker Prize, this witty, controversial, and brilliant bestselling novel has been compared to the works of Joyce, Beckett, and many other masters. A raw, wry vision of human survival in a bureaucratic world, How Late It Was, How Late opens one Sunday morning in Glasgow, Scotland, as Sammy, an ex-convict with a penchant for shoplifting, awakens in a lane and tries to remember the two-day drinking binge that landed him there. Then, things only get worse. Sammy gets in a fight with some soldiers, lands in jail, and discovers that he is completely blind. His girlfriend disappears, the police probe him endlessly, and his stab at Disability Compensation embroils him in the Kafkaesque red tape of the welfare system. A masterpiece of black humor, subtle political parody, and Scottish lower-class vernacular How Late It Was, How Late is a classic-to-be from one of today's most talented novelists.

Booker Prize Winner in 1994. A grim tale recounting a week in the life of the narrator, Sammy, an ex-convict who becomes blind after he has been jailed and questioned by the police after a drinking spree. One of Kelman's aims is to give authentic voice to working class Scotland and to this end the novel, like his others, is written in a scatologically brimming Glaswegian vernacular which gives pause to the London literati whom he so despises. When one of his previous novels, A Disaffection, was nominated for the Booker, he was disparaged on the TV broadcast as being 'Billy Connolly with philosophy': he is far more than that. (Kirkus UK)